A blues radio host got a call from his landlord-to-be and hatched a club in one meeting. The Rhythm Room at 1019 East Indian School Road in midtown Phoenix opened on 18 September 1991 with Big Pete Pearson - the city's king of the blues - on stage, conceived when property owner Lenny Frankel recruited harmonica player and KJZZ radio host Bob Corritore to book and shape a blues room in the former Purple Turtle bar. Corritore, a Chicago transplant who had played the building in its Purple Turtle days - one of his first Phoenix bookings, Louisiana Red, happened there in 1981 - bought the club outright in 2001 on the eve of its tenth anniversary and has run it since. The booking policy is a musician's: blues and roots from the perspective of someone who plays them, which has put an extraordinary roster on the small stage - Bo Diddley, R.L. Burnside, Koko Taylor, Junior Wells, Jimmy Rogers, Bobby Rush, Billy Lee Riley and Jessie Mae Hemphill among hundreds. Local legends anchored the room between tours: Howlin' Wolf's last drummer Chico Chism was a beloved fixture until his passing in 2007, and Phoenix stalwarts like Hans Olson and the Hoodoo Kings treat the club as home turf. The room survived the pandemic closure and reopened in August 2021 to mark its 30th anniversary, with Corritore - by then a Blues Music Award-winning artist in his own right - still hosting his long-running Those Low Down Blues show on KJZZ on Sunday nights. Live music runs on a near-nightly basis, mixing national roots tours with local blues, rockabilly and soul, making the unassuming Indian School Road storefront one of the longest-running dedicated roots rooms in the Southwest. The club doubles as a working archive: Corritore records visiting legends in town for shows, and those sessions have fed a string of acclaimed albums - the room functioning as studio, stage and living museum of the idiom at once.

Type: Bar / Pub

Address: 1019 East Indian School Road, Phoenix, AZ, United States, 85014

Telephone: 602-612-4981

Website: https://rhythmroom.com

Cover Charge: 1

Opening Date: 18/09/1991